• Cowboys International — Here Comes A Saturday (1979)

Jona Lewie. Most people my age or of any age have no clue who he is, and those who do know him know him for one song, “You Will Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties”. His one or two hit wonder status obfuscates the fact that he churned out several years worth of inspired new wave songs.

I discovered Jona the same way most others did — from “Kitchen At Parties”, but that song seemed too creative and witty (with lyrics like ‘She was into French cuisine / but I ain’t no Cordon Bleu’) to be the extent of his charm. He was such an unlikely new wave pop star — 10 or 11 years older than fellow Stiffy Kirsty MacColl, and he’s not really all that much of a singer, he’s more of a talker. Not your typical Stiff star, he sings synth-heavy narrations on the now-ness of the late 70’s and early 80’s — an unexcited troubadour of the lounge lizard bildungsroman. He’s kind of like the musical version of Mike The-Cool-Person from the TV show The Young Ones, a bit of an aging hipster, slightly sleazy, occasionally saccharine, but always full of cheeky puns and one-liners.

(Speaking of Kirsty MacColl, she actually sang backing vocals on “You’ll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties” and appeared as one of the bored girls in a few TOTP appearances. They were a bit like an alternative version of the Kate Bush/Peter Gabriel mentor/protege relationship.)

All of this sets him up to be something of a comic pop star, but that doesn’t do justice to his other talents — he’s a fantastic multi-instrumentalist, and was as early of an adopter of synths and drum machines as Gary Numan or anyone else at the time. In fact, his keyboarding skills are so dead simple that they’re devastating in the way they engage. He bangs the Polymoog like it’s a Farfisa and doesn’t apologize for it. He sounds like a lot of different things, but always like himself. Cases in point:

Here’s what put him on the map. It sounds like Ian Dury, Captain Sensible, and the male/female vocal alternation resembles the future Human League.

• click to play: Jona Lewie — You’ll Always Find Me In The Kitchen At Parties

Then there’s this one, which sounds like an amazing synthpop version of the 1950’s, right down to the infectious chant. I hear a bit of Beach Boys and Nick Lowe in there too.

• click to play: Jona Lewie — Louise

Even more shocking, his song “Heart of Steel” is a DEAD RINGER for the band Erasure. Yes, that Erasure — the electronics, arrangement, even some of his vocal delivery is a foretelling of what Vince Clarke and Andy Bell would sound like 5 years later.

• click to play: Jona Lewie — Heart of Steel

He even sounds like a mix between the Beatles and Squeeze in this song. The song title could have been a Beatles throwaway track.

• click to play: Jona Lewie — I Think I’ll Get My Hair Cut

Further expounding on the Beatles-esque vibe, his other widely known song, “Stop The Cavalry”, is the UK’s most unlikely Christmas hit. It sounds like something from a new wave Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, and was only a hit because it has a single line that states on a droll, dry manner: “Wish I was at home… for Christmas.”

• click to play: Jona Lewie — Stop The Cavalry

Jona Lewie might not have been the most serious man to play a synthesizer in late 70’s Britain, but he was one of the most fun and one of the least remembered.

And while I wouldn’t say the album’s contents itself are perfect, it has a brilliant production value that is something akin to the Beatles and Spector in the synthpop age. Listen to “Perfect Hostess”, for example:

• The Korgis — Perfect Hostess

What’s a recipe that is repeated over and over yet always sounds pretty good? A certain kind of new wave pop song, which has the following for its ingredients:

• Gated drum — check
• Synth-vibe-glock sound — check
• Dreams of a far off land that doesn’t exist but actually does
  exist somewhere near Merseyside — check

• click: China Crisis — Greenacre Bay

Thanks to the Aaron Aiken for introducing me to this song. I had previously written off most of the band China Crisis heretofore, but the synths in this song pre-date the late 1980’s sound of the Cure by, well, most of the decade.

• Portion Control — The Great Divide (1985)

  “Coulda been a contender, though the chances were slender…”

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  David Bowie — Boys Keep Swinging

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  The Associates — Boys Keep Swinging

As a review of the Associates’ debut album explained, “Billy Mackenzie is vocally reminiscent of Bowie: but Bowie has never sung with so much delightful range and subtlety, never really had to.” I can see where David Bowie started it all, but where did Billy Mackenzie take it?

I think the best way to demonstrate where he took it is to lay out alternate versions of the same song, side by side. The first is a B-side, “Mona Property Girl”, released in 1979; the second is “A Girl Named Property”, the same song (as in, same lyrics), but with an entirely different arrangement and vocal take on what is best described as a combination mockery/paean of personifying the inanimate.

Why do he’s call their ships she’s?
For comfort or for company?
He phone calls his lover by name, then another wave
Goodbye let stones skim their seas

One is a fat, bubbly, down tempo post-punk bridge extended into a full song, the second is, well, absolutely meant for the nave of a church. Here is a vocalist who wasn’t afraid to remain on the margin (unlike Freddy Mercury), and also a vocalist who used more of what he had because he simply had it (unlike David Bowie). In his voice, you hear goth, cabaret, krautrock and torch songs all at once. When I hear these songs, I know that I was looking hard for this, for years, and am finally rewarded with the queasy comfort in his voice. I wonder if he ever considered that there would be people out there like me, unable to find the right words to demonstrate respect for what he did, a decade after he died like the normal person he wasn’t, buried in some public cemetery in Dundee. He had to want that on some level, so I hope I’m giving him his due as much as one person can.

• Associates — Mona Property Girl (1979)
• Associates — A Girl Named Property (1981)

• The Associates — 18 Karat Love Affair